Chapter One: One Way or Another
Kim was alone, once again. Ron was doing an invitational tour of the Midwest with the team, having become the Middleton Mad Dogs star running back since first term. The tweebs had gone to a lecture that their dad was conducting at the International Aeronautics Convention in Japan. Mom was in Hawaii for the American Medical Association Conference. Monique was working extra shift to cover the money she'd blown over Christmas. That left Kim to her own devices. All alone, with her stalker.
Sure she'd known about it. A year and a half ago, she'd felt the itch, the rising of the hairs on the nape of her neck, her aura disturbed by the constant vigilance of another. At first she though she was just being paranoid; after almost eighteen months of crime fighting, she thought that there must be someone who'd be interested in hitting her at home, where it would hurt. But after a week of it, she asked Wade to do random surreptitious scans around her. He never did turn anything up.
It wasn't so much a constant presence, but it was the most intense when she was alone, and that made her heart trip-hammer with dread. At the mall. At cheerleading practise. At school. Sometimes even on the bus, when she'd head to the Middleton Hospital for volunteer work. When she'd worked the late weekend shift at Bueno Nacho, and subsequently Club Banana. At home, when she was in bed.
After three months she thought that the stalker would have given up or made a move. But the presence would turn up in unexpected places. The school bathroom. The mall elevator. The beach shower stall. Nana's Florida old folks home.
There were no pictures on the Internet or even the In-Terror Net.
Six months in, Kim was pissed. She just couldn't seem to shake the presence once it started, nor could she identify the stalker. She would whip around corners and ask Wade for scans. She'd flag Global Justice for a transport tube with the pretence of wanting to speak to Doctor Director, or even Will Du. She'd even call in ride favours to see if she could lose the presence. When people, Betty, Will and Wade began giving her looks, she stopped.
Maybe it was the tweebs pranking her. But for six months?
Nine months after, she felt resigned. The presence, once it made itself known, would stay with her, sometimes as briefly as five minutes, other times, for hours. Rain, shine, sleet, or snow.
Everything changed six months ago, a year after it had started.
Kim was walking home from school after an extended cheer practise. It was summer, and with high school sports on hiatus, the cheer squad focused on competitions. Between Kim and Bonnie, their squad would consistently place in the top three if they didn't outright win. Regionals, nationals, invitations; the squad would be busy all summer. Including her world-saving hobby and her part-timer status at Club Banana, she'd little time for the basics of food and sleep.
Kim was crossing the street when she heard the distant roar of engines. She traversed the deserted road quickly and started walking, the presence with her. She could hear the roar approaching the intersection she'd just left, when the siren of Middleton Police Cruisers cut through the air. Behind her, five cars thundered by. Two more peeled north, opposite of Kim's direction, tires screeching.
Even now she could still smell the acrid smoke of burning rubber as if it was just yesterday. Two more cars screeched through the intersection. Turned in her direction. The first car, a blood red Honda Civic, fishtailed, losing speed; the one slipstreaming behind, a silver mustang coupe, had a lead foot. As if captured in slow motion highspeed video camera, Kim remembered how the second car's tires jumped as they hit a manhole cover, launching the car up even as the first car's rear dipped as the driver struggled for control. Police cruisers were just entering the intersection behind them, red and white lights strobing through the dark, the beams distinct in the smoke pouring out of the tires. The second car's bumper cleared the edge of the first car and the forward momentum launched the silver car into the air, right at Kim. As the car flew into the lamppost in front of her, the presence intensified.
A sudden, heavy blow smacked Kim right in the stomach, driving the air out of her as the car began to descend toward her, the lamp standard whipping downwards. Glass, small pieces of the red car sprayed up as the Civic spun wildly at the collision of the second car. She was lifted off her feet even as the silver mustang impacted the ground inches from her. She was only dimly aware that it was an arm that had wrapped around her waist, a strong, warm body pressed against her as the presence whisked her away from the steel carnage that was now flipping its way toward a hundred year old oak tree. Reaching the apex of the swing, the lithe body let go of whatever it had used to give its trajectory and Kim and the presence dropped to the sidewalk, ten feet from the grooves carved into the sidewalk by the tumbling car. And of a sudden, the presence left her side as she reached out to grasp it. In the sparks of the gas lamp as it shattered on the walk, Kim saw long dark hair, smelled a sweet scent.
And then the presence was gone.
Kim was left the midst of broken glass and metal. The red car eventually careened into the storefront of the local barbershop. Kim helped other passersby and the police extricate the drivers from the mauled vehicles. The mustang driver had crushed his right shoulder when the car had come down and flipped, end on end before coming to a thunderous halt in the tree.
The drivers were eventually all rounded up. Just dumb rich kids who'd taken their parent's cars for a joy ride and had begun racing after watching Quick and Quicker, a film that had been criticized for encouraging street racing.
But all Kim could think about was the warmth. The strength. The smell of the presence. The long dark hair.
She thought she knew who it was now. Kim wasn't stupid. The timing was just too right. She wanted the presence to make itself known though. She wanted to thank it. Wanted to know the why of it. She wanted.... she wasn't sure what she wanted from it.
She obsessed about it.
Dreamed about it.
Four months ago, began fantasizing about it.
What would it take to make the presence break its silence and its solitude?
She began to flirt with it. First it started with small secret smiles. After a week of that, poses. A slight arch of the back, a slight turn of the waist, a slight lean to the posture, forward or back.
Never in public, of course. For the presence only.
Three months past, the flirting extended to clothing in the privacy of her room. Hot pants. Short skirts. Plunging necklines. Loose sleeves. Lingerie.
It was eating up her Club Banana paycheck. Ron and Monique began to comment on how they weren't hanging out enough. Even Bonnie snarked at how she rushed home after practise.
Kim swore she could feel the presence get closer with each level, become more intense with each inhibition removed.
One month ago, she took it to a whole new level.
She did her research; the internet was chock full of sexy do-it-yourself videos . She learned the belly dance. The pole dance. The striptease. And while she did it, she could feel her heart racing, her skin turning sensitive and shivering, her face hot and flushed.
She'd never done... it... before, but in some of the videos, the girls seemed really into... it.
She began fondling herself. Nothing too radical. A slight tease on the nipples. A caress on her belly or her neck. Just enough to get her breath short and her body flushed. Then she'd turn in with a small secret smile. Something shared.
But each session went longer.
Hotter.
Wetter.
The last time, she had finally made herself at home between her legs. She could still remember how her chest had trembled, her heart thundering, how the forces had rushed through her, her legs straining, constricting, how it had flashed through her body, twisting it, a searing white hotness, waves of something indescribable washing through her, curling her toes and tingling her hair. How it seemed like someone else's voice had gone “Oh-oh-oh-oh!” Yet it was hers. But it was what she found minutes after the presence had left that had made her smile.
Her window sat atop the roof of the first floor, and in the snow frosted tiles was a single, size six footprint just below the sill.
Tonight she wore a plum, sequined and strapless bra that pushed up her perky breasts. A plum garter belt skirt hung seductively over her hips, only giving divine flashes of a plum thong with black lace trim. The belt hooked onto black stockings. Black garters and black lacy fingerless gloves completed her hunting outfit.
All this time, she thought that she was the prey, that she was the victim, the target.
Tonight, she was the huntress.
When the presence made itself known, Kim stalked toward the bed, giving a little twirl as as she sat, crossing her legs, dangling one stocked foot above the other. She leaned back on her elbows, throwing her crimson hair over one shoulder. She began to caress her belly and her chest, describing gentle patterns across her skin as it began to pebble with goosebumps. She ran her fingers up her neck, then down her sides. One hand went up to caress her lips as the other began to tease her breast through the bra.
Back and forth her hands floated, touching, coaxing, squeezing. Kim felt a dampness begin to form below; she could feel her mind become enveloped in a tunnel of pleasure, of urgency. The presence began to grow, began to pulse, as if a living breathing thing, that wrapped her in an indescribable warmth, beguiling her, enticing her on and on, further and further along, soothing her even as it charmed her.
The hero's hands began squeezing her breasts, teasing the nipples with her short manicured nails, tantalizing, stroking, caressing until they were painfully hard, begging for release. She sat up onto her knees, reached up with one hand and released the clasp hidden behind the ribbon in the middle and the bra fell away. Her nipples stood proud in its arousal even as she ran her fingers lightly along her toned flanks, past her ribs and around the swell of her breasts. Then down the valley between. Once again, up from her thighs, the silken inner thigh, flipping the skirt gently even as her hands converged on her erect mounts and began to squeeze in earnest.
Her breath was coming hard and deep now, her voice, almost foreign in its state of excitement, mewling, gasping, panting. Each touch, each caress was simply another electric layer of arousal, kindling for a bright rolling flame.
Kim imagined the presence, a lithe muscular figure, kneeling outside, panting onto the cool window pane, the breath frosting as her excitement stimulated the presence toward its own rolling crest, climbing, swirling, engulfing thought, drowning in desire.
As the aura of the presence began to undulate around her, she reached down, slowly, ever so slowly to her thighs, dragging her nails along her flushed skin, leaving runnels of white that immediately turned an inflamed pink. It was all she could do to not cry out when she touched her core, her inner self. Even through the laced undergarment, the pleasure pooling almost painfully in the soles of her feet resonated through her in concentric circles. The aura of the presence began to shift and whirl in time with the small shocks of pleasure that radiated from her.
Higher and higher, the layers fell into place, as if the thrill of the presence stirred the flames to a brighter intensity. A pressure seemed to build from with in her, the passion rising, plateauing, then rising higher, then plateauing, a frenzied cycle of touch, pressure and emotion. And when she felt aflame with ardour, the agony of waiting a pleasure in of itself, when the world had compressed into a shining corona as the burning fervour was masked by a tormenting self-restraint, when it became unbearable, her hand dipped beneath the lace.
In a cascading supernova, Kim screamed, her green eyes open yet blinded by throes of passionate release, her body shaking, writhing in pleasure. But even as she rode the shockwaves of bliss, she thought she could hear the cries of the presence as well, joining hers, intensifying them, magnifying the seismic forces that tore through her straining body.
The quaking seemed to continue forever, and even afterwards her legs twitched with the aftershocks running rampant through her. With the vestiges of thought returning, she forced her body's lassitude away, reached beneath her pillow and pressed the button on the remote hidden there earlier that evening. She waited for a moment before rising to her feet, her muscles jumping in fatigue, and put on a long wool jacket. She stumbled with desire leaden legs to the window and threw it wide open and looked down.
Slumped on the roof just below the window was a green and black catsuited woman in a forest green jacket. The jacket and and catsuit were open, the suit down to the crotch. Even now, the unconscious woman's hand still nestled in the tight confines of the suit. Kim reached under the sill and removed the tiny remote release canister of sleeping gas and grinned.
With comet powers, the gas wasn't likely to keep the woman down for long. She had to move fast.
Shego stirred, languidly stretching, the glow of her orgasm warming her body, her head still muddled. She'd never passed out from masturbating before, but then she'd never crushed so hard on another person before either. But when she tried to bring her hands down to close up her catsuit, she found she couldn't. Her eyes snapped open.
It wasn't the glow. She was indoors, safe from the winter cold. Her hands and legs were being restrained by satin lined leather cuffs, tied securely to the posts of the bed on which she lay on. And she was naked! Her eyes widened in shock.
Oh, shit.
She turned her head at the sound of a soft tread. Standing by the bed was Princess, topless, still in her garters, stockings and gloves. In one hand, she held a long iridescent peacock feather which waved back and forth hypnotically. The look on her face made Shego's mouth dry but sent a jolt into her spent loins, quick-charging her lust. All the hero said was one word, with a triumphant, sensual smile.
“Gotcha.”